Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1038: Southern road(2)

"That was no sport at all," a man sighed, his tone of voice giving away the boredom of it all.

Twack.

The sound of steel biting through a wool tunic and into a soft chest followed. Dunn, huddled in the beneath the lead wagon, squeezed his eyes shut. He could hear the wet, rattling cough of the man above him, a guard who had joked with him only an hour ago, then silence with a final, gurgling exhale.

Then came the blood.

It flowed with a slow, purposeful inevitability, like the tusk of a mighty tree powerless to stop himself from burning.

It crept across the dry, cracked earth of the road like a crimson tide, reaching toward Dunn’s hiding spot. He watched, paralyzed, as it touched his chin, the warmth of it anguishing against the pure cold terror in his veins. He made no move to wipe it away. He feared that even the sound of his sleeve against his skin would be a death sentence.

No it was best to stay put, and not move a muscle, not even one.

A few feet away, the glassy, wide-eyed stare of his father’s corpse peered back at him from the dust. It is your fault. Those eyes seemed to say. You just had to sing that damn song, didn’t you?How did it go?

Shameleik was the first....and now we be the last.

Shame and guilt overtook the boy.

A voice soon rose from his right, rough and coarse, as if the speaker had spent a lifetime breathing the smoke of sacked villages and eating nails.

"What? Did you expect a heroic stand from a pack of tradesmen and whatever bronzii they could scrape together for a handful of guards?These are mercenaries, not knights."

"They had weapons, did they not?" another replied, his tone mocking. "As far I can see difference between us and them are the horses.

They could have died with a shred of honor instead of scattering like field mice the moment Reachio split the first one’s skull. It’s pathetic."

Dunn saw a pair of mud-caked boots stomp toward his father’s body before putting a foot on the carriage above the boy. Soon enough he heard the sound of the man tearing the royal herald, the golden falcon of Yarzat.

"One of them even started waving this damn rag," the man laughed, shaking the herald. "As if we couldn’t see it already. Bloody fool. Did he think the bird would fly down and save him?This is Oizen not Yarzat. Here the royals bear the sun, not a bloody chicken...’’

A brief, heavy silence fell over the riders, broken only by the crackle of a small fire they had started with the wagon’s crates.

"So... are we all truly fine with this?" a third voice asked, lower than the others.

"What? Found your pity now? Isn’t it a bit late for a conscience, Reachio?"

"I am asking if we are fine with the consequences," the man snapped back. "I trust at least one of you thought about what comes after.You are not fools. We may laugh and jest, but we know what we did today and what we are going to do now.

Aye, they promised us a king’s ransom, but let’s be serious. We know what what hive we are shaking. We’ve sparked a wildfire. As far as that lord or whoever contracted us are concerned, wouldn’t it be easier to simply bury us in a shallow hole and be done with it? Dead men tell no tales of who paid for the steel.That’d be at least what I’d do after hiring us..."

"A bit late for cold feet, isn’t it? Especially after what we did. Should have brought your pansy doubts before we plunged the blade down." The man holding the herald spat on the ground. "I trust my contact. We go back a long way. If I can’t trust him, I can’t trust anyone. I say we’re set for life.

Why all this mind-fuck? Want to go back on the wild, waiting for some tournament to pull up, and get that laurel and some lord’s favor?’’

’’Why not?Ain’t that safer than this?’’

’’Been two decades since the last one here, fools... all the fault of that peasant in Yarzat that we are starving . With all this war, there ain’t no time nor money for lords and princes to organize jousts.

All worries about that damn falcon, and there isn’t much renown to be had there when you are the cunt among hundreds with horse and lance....yeah you can get some coin out of it, but more probably you lose your fucking horse or your life. This is not how a knight should live!

There are no jobs for us masterless men in that field anymore. Either it is starving, pillaging, or becoming mercenary, one worse than the other.

My father was a fucking valorous man who won two tourneys and unhorsed the lord of Pordum himself.And also a fool!Some with brain should have asked to enter his service instead of asking for money.... There’s no way I go to him as a beggar. This is my chance to make it big.

Still, if you’re truly so pissed in your britches, we can leave one of the boys behind to head toward the next town, and in case we don’t get back to him, we let him spread the story. The man will see us with one less and will pay us the coin, as they’ll understand they won’t be able to get all of us at one time.They will want to keep this under wraps....that buys us time to vanish with the coin and do something with our life, I’d say."

"I suppose..."

"Anyway, no use brooding on it now. What’s done is done. We still have three more wagons to gut. We just popped our cherry; I’d say we made today unforgettable. How many men can say they’ve pissed upon the Falcon of Yarzat and lived to tell of it? Bloody fucking hell, even the Romelians bow to the bastards now...fucking peasants who think themselves high for drilling a noble cunt."

He threw the silk cloth into the dirt and stepped over it.

’’With all this dry air, the falcon must be thirsty....’’

Soon, the rhythmic, splashing sound of a man relieving himself filled the air.

"I lost a brother at Apurvio,"another man muttered through his teeth. "I’d say I’ve earned a good piss on the Peasant’s bird. Fuck it."

Soon more and more men joined the golden shower.

They said war usually started with a bang; in this case, it started with piss coming down a rag from some disgruntled man who still did not realize what they had done and what that would bring.

Wisdom had given way for foolishness and ambitions.

From there on , the world became a blur of sound for Dunn. He kept his eyes squeezed shut, listening to the agonizing sound of sacks being sliced open, the clatter of spilled grain, and the leering, hungry laughter of the men as they found the hidden strongboxes, or urns of ciders his father had paid dearly to get.

One man even patted down his father’s corpse, his hands inches from where Dunn lay trembling. The bandit let out a hoot of satisfaction as he sliced away the small bundle of coins his father kept bound to his inner thigh.

All gone , that was the last of his inheritance.

Through it all, Dunn stood still, a ghost beneath the wood. He didn’t move even when the thunder of hooves signaled the riders’ departure, heading back toward the same horizon from which they had emerged like a plague.

It was only at nightfall, when the first stars began to pierce the smoke-stained sky, that he found the courage to crawl out.

There he stood amidst the wreckage of his life, looking down at the ruin of the enterprise he was supposed to inherit. A life’s work, his father’s sweat and his mother’s hopes, all wasted in the span of a single afternoon.

Whatever a man could do in ten years, another may undo in ten minutes. He realised that now, just how fast a life could come down.

He looked down at the soaked, soiled herald of Yarzat, the thing that was supposed to protect them.The image which his father treated with so much reverence. He knelt and grasped it, feeling the wetness of it coming from the piss of his father’s killer. He didn’t cry.

Of that at least he was proud.He was a man now.

Even when he wondered why his father held so much regard for a piece of cloth...he did not cry.

He was an adult; his father had told him so. And adults didn’t cry, even though Father did bawl like a child in his last moments....

He raised his head and looked down the long, empty road. He didn’t know where he was going, but as he clutched the ruined bird to his chest, he knew he was no longer the boy of that morning.

And so, clasping the piss-soaked falcon, he set himself on the road, and this time he held no song on his tongue.